DEFENCE Minister Nicos Symeonides died yesterday after losing an ongoing battle with a deteriorating respiratory condition.
Symeonides, who was 68, was first admitted to the Nicosia General Hospital on January 5 after displaying symptoms of pneumonia, suffering a small heart attack while undergoing a biopsy on his lungs a week later.
The Defence Minister was released from hospital on March 3, only to be re-admitted for an infection of the urinary system last month.
His death was announced at 10am yesterday by Nicosia General Hospital Head Rita Komodiki. Symeonides’ funeral will take place at midday on Saturday at the Apostolos Andreas Church in Aglandja. The cost of the funeral will be covered by the state, while Justice Minister Sophocles Sophocleous will read the tribute.
After a specially convened Cabinet meeting chaired by President Papadopoulos, a three-day mourning period was declared. All National Guard camps and government departments will fly the national flag at half-mast during the three days.
A condolences book will also be open at the Ministry of Defence on Thursday and Friday. Acting Government Spokesman Vassilis Palmas announced that Ministers and other high-ranking civil servants would refrain from functions to celebrate various events.
Symeonides, a lawyer and an economist by trade, was a career civil servant who served in a number of ranks within most of the government departments. He served successively as Permanent Secretary of various Ministries (Ministry of Justice, Education, Communications and Works, Health and Labour and Social Insurance).
President Tassos Papadopoulos expressed his grief and praised Symeonides’ work during his term in office.
“His death deprives me of an honest friend and a valuable associate,” he said. “I have been following with great anxiety the difficult times he was facing in the past few months, and was being kept informed about his health.”
Papadopoulos had continuously rejected calls to name a new Defence Minister while Symeonides was in hospital and reacted furiously at journalists during a television interview last month after they suggested the Defence Minister had resigned because of his ailing condition.
Labour Minister Antonis Vassiliou called Symeonides a “beloved and great colleague”, adding that he had shown he was “conscientious and hard working despite the short time he had worked in the Cabinet”.
Symeonides, who was the third Defence Minister in less than a year, was appointed to the post on October 6, one month after the resignation of Phivos Klokkaris. Klokkaris resigned after only three months in the job citing personal and health reasons, following allegations that he tried to unravel a paramilitary unit operating within the National Guard.
During his troubled reign, Symeonides had to face calls for a major upheaval in the military establishment after the media stir caused by daily Politis which published lists of people requesting favourable army transfers, along with their benefactors.
Palmas yesterday confirmed that Finance Minister Michalis Sarris would take over Symeonides’ duties as Acting Defence Minister until President Papadopoulos appoints a new Minister.
Symeonides is the second minister in Cyprus’ 11-member Cabinet to die since the turn of the year, less than four months after Education Minister Pefkios Georgiades died from a sudden heart attack.
